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Mega Growth Projects: Challenges To Maintenance & Reliability Functions and Integration 

by Sridhar Ramakrishnan, P.Eng, MMP    

INTRODUCTION

In the middle to later part of last decade, a large number of oil and gas companies in Alberta have embarked upon growth projects that have increased their production capabilities. While some are new green field projects, many others are brown field projects where capacities are being added to existing operations.

In the year 2000, 245 million barrels of crude bitumen was produced in Alberta [source: Alberta Energy & Utilities Board’s Statistical Series 2001-98]. In the year 2010 the production increased by 2.38 times as 584 million barrels of crude bitumen was produced in Alberta [source: Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board’s June 2010 report]. The province is expected to produce nearly 1204 million barrels of crude bitumen in 2019, almost double what was produced in 2010 and more than four times what was produced in 2000.

These growth projects bring with them a number of challenges, an important one being integrating the Maintenance & Reliability (M&R) functions and departments of the new plant with that of the existing / old plants.

This article highlights some of the key challenges that operating oil and gas companies are facing (including some `soft’ challenges), and some solutions.

CHALLENGES

1. People: The first and foremost is the people challenge. With more and more projects coming on stream, there will be continued demand for more workers while the existing experienced labour pool is gradually turning over to retirement. These conditions mean that we must find ways to transfer knowledge and skills from the experienced workforce to a younger and (relatively) inexperienced workforce and to effectively integrate people arriving from outside of Canada and even those moving between companies with our existing organizational culture.

2. Workforce Efficiency: To meet the needs of growth projects, there is a surge in recruitment by the oil and gas companies. Increased cash flow in the recent years is helping this recruitment boom. In many cases it is leading to overlapping roles and responsibilities. This has a potential to create confusion and conflicts between different teams, and between people working in the same team, thereby resulting in loss of efficiency – people compete with one another to focus on activities, instead of working as a team to deliver results.

3. Multitude of M&R Methodologies: A large number of M&R methodologies have emerged in the last couple of decades, well supported by growth in new technology. Lack of correct understanding of the methodologies coupled with multitude of concurrent initiatives often results in incomplete or incorrect application of any particular methodology. This in turn prevents the organizations from reaping the full benefits of the methodologies.

4. Abundance of Software: Growth of M&R methodologies and technology has led to an explosive growth in number of software products available to support them. The result is that we tend to serve the software rather than using it as a tool to help us meet our objectives. These days it is not uncommon to find organizations having one Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) software, another software for document management, a third software to facilitate information and reports gathering from the EAM software, a fourth one for specialized maintenance or reliability methodology, and so on.

SOLUTIONS

Following are the six key steps that can help meet the above challenges:

1. Developing a Standards Driven Approach: M&R organizations and departments have to ensure a standards-driven approach for the new projects. Wherever Standards, Procedures or Work Practices exist, they have to be followed. If none exist, they have to be created and then followed. Even if that takes time. It has to be this way even if the existing / old project has not followed the standards – they will catch up subsequently.

2. Managing Changes: Strict control should be exercised over changes to the standards, procedures and work practices through an effective process which could be an EAM assisted Management of Change (MOC) process. This will ensure that the changes are process-driven and reasonable, not personality-driven. This will also prevent people (especially people new to the organization) from re-inventing the wheel as they might be under pressure to prove themselves by doing something different, which are often redoing the same thing in a slightly different fashion – without adding any value even while consuming resources.

3. Setting Realistic Goals: The targets or goals set in M&R should commensurate with the maturity of maintenance organization on the maintenance maturity curve. The goals should be clearly defined with realistic ends in mind. Setting too refined a target is setting up for failure from the very beginning. Once the targets and goals are set, track them and try to achieve them with a planned time-frame.

4. Establishing a Collaborative Mindset: A collaborative mindset not only helps in setting up a good asset management system in place for new projects, it also helps ensure a seamless integration with the people and programs related to M&R in the existing plant operations.

5. Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities: The roles and responsibilities of different M&R teams should be well defined and well understood by everyone,

and they should be relevant to, and aligned with the M&R goals. The same is true for individuals within the same team as well. This will help people focus on results instead of focusing on activities, thereby increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of M&R work processes and functions. This will also enable right people to take the right decisions at the right time on valid issues that they are best equipped to deal with.

6. Selecting the Right Technologies and Methodologies : Organizations should select M&R technologies and methodologies that are most relevant for the new projects and their existing projects – selecting only the must haves, not the nice-to-haves. Additional and newer M&R methodologies and technology should always be accompanied by a comprehensive training program for the employees who are going to use them.

SUMMARY

Challenges often end up as opportunities. On the positive side, the employees these days are younger, tech-savvy, and have more years to contribute to the industry. Many of them bring experience from overseas – from India, China, Philippines, Venezuela, South Africa, Eastern Europe, to name a few. In this era of globalization, they can only benefit the organizations. Availability of multitude of technologies and techniques mean that there are always a better, safer, more environment friendly, more reliable and more efficient options for maintaining the physical assets, and for integrating them with the existing plant operations.

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Sridhar is a Senior Reliability Engineer with Suncor Energy Inc. in Calgary, Canada. His current role is to help establish sound systems, processes and methodologies to support Maintenance & Reliability excellence in Insitu growth projects. Sridhar has been working in the upstream oil and gas industry for the last 22 years. You can read his article describing his involvement in the Asset Management System development for a new project published in the October / November 2011 issue of Uptime.

http://reliabilityweb.com/index.php/articles/foundation_for_maintenance_... eliability_excellence/

Are you facing similar challenges in your organization? Are there other challenges that are not discussed in the article? How are your departments / organizations gearing up to meet these challenges? Which of the key challenges are more valid for your department / organization than others? Consider joining the PEMAC LinkedIn group and joining the discussion.